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An Informal Date (Informal Romance) (Volume 4)

By Heather Gray

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CHAPTER ONE

Here he comes again.

Kimi pretended to organize her muffin assortment as Dr. No-Name approached. She could set her clock by him. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7:05 in the morning, he came for his large half-caff triple nonfat medium whip white mocha. Even though she knew what he would order, she waited for him to arrive. One day not too long ago, she’d started his drink as soon as he’d stepped into view. She’d had the steaming beverage ready and waiting for him. The poor guy had been so flustered he’d knocked over the fruit basket and taken out half the cookie display in the process.

She’d learned an important lesson that day. Two, really. Patience paid off. And some people don’t handle change well.

Dr. No-Name glanced to the side and tripped over a covered cable that ran along the floor. He kicked the toe of his loafer into the top of the cable’s molded rubber protector, lost his balance, hopped a couple of times on his left foot, swung his arms like a grade-schooler doing the windmill in PE, and finally got his right shoe back down on the ground. Despite the theatrical gymnastics, nobody but her appeared to be watching the show. She had to give him points for the landing. Not a brown hair on his head was out of place, and his lab coat hung from his shoulders with straight lines in complete denial of its recent whirlwind of activity.

The same cable had been positioned across that floor for as long as Kimi could remember. The doctor had to know it, too, but unless his eyes were trained directly on it, he seemed to forget. She’d witnessed his footwork often enough to realize that much, at least.

Kimi turned her back on him lest he catch her spying. Despite his oddities, she enjoyed Dr. No-Name’s visits to her kiosk and didn’t want to scare him off by staring or — heaven forbid — laughing.

“Um, excuse me.”

She turned around, her smile in place and hopefully no pity in her eyes. “Good morning! The usual?”

Dr. No-Name nodded. Most doctors wore their name embroidered on their official white lab coats, but not this one. Plain white, no fancy frills, and no embroidery. Either he wasn’t important enough for a name on his coat or he was humble enough not to care. She secretly hoped it was the latter.

Kimi set to work on his drink and tried to make conversation. “You always order a triple shot, but you want half-caff. Most people who want to go easy on the caffeine avoid the triple.”

She caught his shrug out of the corner of her eye. Getting this guy to talk was harder than pulling a barking dog’s molars with a pair of tweezers.

“There must be a reason. What about the triple shot do you find inviting?”

He blinked a couple of times, masking the bright blue of his eyes, before answering. “I like the taste of the triple, but I don’t want a caffeine high.”

She’d figured as much. As a coffee aficionado, she could understand. She loved the flavor but wasn’t always interested in the calories or the caffeine. Like him, she’d learned to improvise.

She handed over his drink, and Dr. No-Name passed her three ones, two quarters, one dime, and one nickel. That was the other reason he remained a no-name. Had he ever paid with credit card, she would know his name by now. He always paid in cash, though. The exact $3.65 including tax.

“There’s going to be a price increase later this month. I don’t know the date yet or the new prices, but I thought I should warn you.”

His turn away from her kiosk stalled. “Why?”

“Why am I warning you, or why the change?”

He reached for a napkin and wiped off the spotless customer side of the counter. “Why the increase?”

It was her turn to shrug. “The late summer rains have been too heavy. Flooding ruined a good part of South America’s coffee crop. Our owner expects to see an exponential hike in bean prices over the coming year, so he’s trying to get ahead of things with a small increase now. He hopes doing that will allow him to postpone a larger increase.”

“Supply and demand.” He was a master at being succinct.

“Pretty much. Kind of the same reason why some pharmaceutical drugs are so expensive.”

He shook his head. “That’s an erroneous comparison. Coffee crops depend on nature to thrive. Pharmaceuticals are almost all manmade these days. If a company wants the price of their drug to go up, they can choose to make less of it. Decisions like that happen in boardrooms. Nobody chose to ruin their coffee crop.”

Kimi wiped the imaginary crumbs off the small counter near her cash register. “Excellent point. Do you think pharmaceutical companies actually do that? Make less so they can charge more?”

A shadow passed over his face, transforming his normally blue eyes into an obscure shade of grey. “Some do. It’s a fact of doing business. There are others, though, that I think... I hope... maintain integrity.” With a brisk nod in her direction, he turned and headed back the way he’d come. He stopped before he came to the site of his previous trip. Kimi would have loved to see the look on his face as he took a higher-than-usual step over the rubberized cable protector.

Dr. No-Name fascinated her, but she still hadn’t figured out why. She didn’t get many doctors in her part of the hospital. Near the surgical waiting room, her kiosk put her in a position to deal almost exclusively with family members. Doctors didn’t usually come this way — at least not for coffee. What’s more, Dr. No-Name always approached from her right, which meant he came from within the hospital, not from the parking garage. There had to be other kiosks more convenient to his location than hers.

Oh well. She’d gotten him to talk more today than any day previous. Maybe he’d still be talkative come Friday. If so, she might even be able to pull a name out of him.

All for the sake of making conversation and putting her customers at ease, of course.

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